Comparing Gilgamesh And Achilles 'Free Will In Iliad'

 The Iliad and the Hebrew bible go into the theme of free will, but in some ways they differ from each other. The Hebrew bible for example focuses on free will, because God has free will. This causes humans to have access to free will, because in the Hebrew bible’s creation story we are mad from the image of God (158-159). It is interesting though because although humans are granted free will in the Hebrew bible, God seems to interact not by force, but by leading humans to where he wants them to go. For instance, after Adam and Eve were punished by god for eating the forbidden fruit he led them out of the Garden of Eden away from the tree of eternal life (161). I personally think he did this for the reason of keeping his status of higher power.

A similarity that they share is they both have goddesses as mothers. I find this important because their mothers are the reason they are both part divine. Gilgamesh specifically is “two-thirds divine” (100). One other interesting similarity is that they both have a specific best friend who tries to help guide them. Gilgamesh’s best friend is Enkidu and Achilles’s is Patroclus. They also both lose their friends to selfishness, but grieve with no shame.

The main difference in the two is heroism. Gilgamesh wants heroism and thinks of it very highly, but Achilles questions the idea of heroism. Achilles even mentions that he would rather get half the honor by not fighting then to die for a great honor (270). Gilgamesh on the other hand is obsessed with the fame of heroism. He completed each of his task with the determination to reach heroism, and failing wasn’t an option for him. Similar or different they both are very well developed

The Trojan War was all started because of a women. Helen, the wife of Menelaus, gets token from her husband as a prize for Paris, because Paris chose Aphrodite to receive a golden apple (223). This in return starts the Trojan Wars. The power of women plays a big role even in that small excerpt. Helen is being treated as an object, but at the same time valuable enough to start a war. Also, we see Aphrodite, who is a goddess, having enough power to take away Helen from her husband. Here we see that Aphrodite held greater power over a mortal man. That not only shows the power of women, but shows there is a hierarchy of women. Throughout The Iliad women are getting referred to as prizes and objects of war but then at the same time they are running their own show. I think that Homer purposely let the different values of women interact throughout the play to create a deeper characterization for women overall. Hera for example is a goddess feared and respected by Zeus (243), but Briseis is just a prize wife that gets taken from Achilles as a punishment to him (238-239). Briseis would not be taken away from Achilles if she didn’t hold value, but she is still definitely no Hera. This Hierarchy of women shows that they are powerful. I think also that Homer had to integrate some submissiveness to men, because of the time frame he was writing in. Overall the role of women being subject to men has no specific